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Beijing's gagged grannies 'not afraid'

Wu Dianyuan, 79, and Wang Xiuying, 77, made
headlines last week when China's Communist authorities sentenced them
to a year in a re-education camp after they applied to
protest during the Beijing Olympics.

BEIJING–With their walking sticks, grey hair and bamboo fans, they look as frail as frail can be.

But they're far feistier than we'd been led to believe.

Wu Dianyuan, 79, and her 77-year-old friend, Wang Xiuying, made headlines last week when China's Communist authorities sentenced them to a year in a Re-education Through Labour camp after they applied to protest in one of the Beijing Olympics' fake "protest parks."

The government said it would allow the two to serve their sentences at home due to their age.

But by anyone's measure, 2008 has already been a year of defiance for the pair. They marched 16 protest banners into Tiananmen Square over 16 days this spring. They were sentenced to a string of "administrative detentions" – which they also served at home. And after dawn one morning, at the gates of Zhongnanhai – the Communist leaders' compound some call China's equivalent of the White House – they set off fireworks.

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Fireworks?

"Yes!" says Wu Dianyuan, enthusiastically.

At Zhongnanhai?

"Yes," she adds, "about 30 or 40 firecrackers in a metal barrel!"

Her son, Li Xuehui, shrugs as if to say, "who am I to explain?" but then offers, "They were desperate."

They still are. In 2001, the two grandmothers were neighbours in southwest Beijing where they had lived for more than 40 years when they were forcibly removed from their homes to make way for a redevelopment project.

They were promised financial compensation. But this week, seated in the cement cubicle Wu now calls home, tucked away in a tiny lane in Beijing's hardbitten Fenzhongsi neighbourhood, the pair said they got nothing.

Wang, who is blind in one eye and legally registered as disabled, lives in a similar cubicle nearby.

Since their removal, the two have been on a relentless seven-year campaign seeking justice.

Theirs is an all-too familiar story across China, where countless citizens claim they've been victims of deals between corrupt local officials and private business interests that forced them from their homes with little or no compensation.

The grandmothers say because of their campaign for compensation, developers cut off electricity to their homes as early as 2002, trying to pressure them to shut up.

But the pressure hasn't worked.

"The developers tried to blackmail and cut us off," says Wu, who now lights her home with kerosene lamps in a city that has just spent two weeks showcasing itself to the world as big, bright and modern.

"We brought it to the attention of the municipal government," she says, "but they've done nothing."

Says Wang, "In all my life I've never made people angry or made trouble for others. I would never have believed that as old as I am now I could have such bad luck."

But when Wu's son Li Xuehui told them in July that he had learned through the Internet that because of the Olympics they would now be able to protest at designated parks in Beijing, the two were excited.

Wu and Wang prepared their banners in Chinese that read: "Forcibly Removed. No Electricity For 6 Years. No One Cares," believing they would finally be able to air their grievances freely without being detained and questioned by the police or being sentenced to "administrative detentions."

Wu, her son Li, Wang and her daughter Wang Fengxian, all travelled to Beijing's Public Security Bureau on Aug. 5 to fill out application forms, noting – according to police regulations – the number of people who would participate, the slogans they would chant and what their banner would say.

The family then visited the bureau on Aug. 11, 13, 15 and 17 to ask if the application had been approved.

On Aug. 17, the grandmothers received their one-year sentence to Re-education Through Labour.

The official document was dated July 30 and it said the two were being sentenced due to their previous clashes with authorities.

Son Li, however, feels it's "possible" that their persistence in applying to protest during the sensitive Olympic period resulted in the sentencing.

"Had these parks never been created," he says, "I don't think they'd be in the situation they're in now."

Some 77 people applied for permission to protest. None won approval.

For now, the daily lives of the two women have changed little: They are free to come and go as they please, provided they stay out of trouble. If they don't, they could end up in a camp.

That prospect is possible. "We're not afraid any more," Wu says flatly. "They already tore down our house. There's nothing left to lose."

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